BitRacer initial alpha

[willThimbleby]

Well I'll keep it in the same thread. uDG is over and I need some sleep, congrats to all. The newest version can now be found here http://www.udevgames.com/downloads/?dlid=19


Old Post:
I just spent the weekend hacking this together. It's a racing game! Very much a WiP, but it is fun and playable. The time will stop after 5 laps. My best is about 150.

The course is a figure of eight. Turn left at the start, and run through the blobs.

Use the numpad 8,4,5,6 to move. Space will filp you back upright, just don't hold it down.

http://img29.exs.cx/img29/4806/jrace1.jpg

What I'm hoping for is some comments on future direction, physics, ideas. And hopefully I'll get enthused enough to finish. I'm still holding off committing to uDG, I've failed the last two years to finish.
:D

The link: http://www.adlam.plus.com/will/BitRace.zip

--Will

[NCarter]

Turn off ZeroLink! :lol:

I look forward to seeing it working... looks interesting.

[Jake]

Doesn't run, what is ZeroLink?

[JustinFic]

Crashes on startup:

Link (dyld) error:

dyld: /Users/justinf/Downloads/BitRace/JetRace.app/Contents/MacOS/JetRace can't open library: /Users/william/JetRace/build/JetRace.build/JetRace.build/Objects-normal/ppc/libstdc++_ZeroLink.dylib (No such file or directory, errno = 2)

A library/framework that should be bundled in the app probably?

[arekkusu]

Always use Deployment build style when you are deploying a build to other people.

[willThimbleby]

Turn off ZeroLink!

Have done, apologies -- I didn't know that happened. :blush:

Same link: http://www.adlam.plus.com/will/BitRace.zip

[NCarter]

That's great fun! I've got to rush off to work, so I can't make too many comments right now, but just a few thoughts:

A bigger default window or full screen mode would be a good thing.
Jumping and rolling is the best bit! I hope I can get decent physics like that into my game!
I think that the level design would benefit from having less flat floor and more slopes, platforms and walls. In fact, I think I'd do away with the floor altogether and build levels completely out of blocks.
If you hold the space bar, you disappear into cyan-coloured limbo. I guess you already know that.
Nice work!

[JustinFic]

Fun stuff! I can get around 225-250 or so for the 5 laps. Runs great on 1.33 GHz Albook.

My two cents:
- The space bar doesn't always flip me. It would be way cooler if the flip was a straight 180∞ roll.
- For testing purposes can you make the arrow keys work too? No keypad here and using numlock makes me bonkers :wacko:
- The jumps rock!

[EvolPenguin]

Very fun. But, if you hold the spacebar too much, it turns a teal-ish color.

Overall, really fun. Controls and jumps are cool.

Alex

[arekkusu]

Numpad is inconvenient on laptops.

[EvolPenguin]

Agreed

Alex

[flipflop]

Good start! I really like the grid the car drives upon, it gives the game a retro feel and gives you a good sense of speed. Perhaps I'm a bit lame but I couldn't follow the track very well. I run into one bubble and had to drive around to figure out where the next bubble was. I have yet to finish a lap... I think :p

Things to play with:
- No number keys, please!
- Make the track a bit more obvious
- Add some pits you can jump over
- Add a stupidly simple AI car to race against

I like the name, BitRacer.

Good work!

[codemattic]

Wow - love the physics - this looks like it will be fun. Sometimes the physics gets a little wonky - Ive seen the ship landing after a big jump start spinning and thrashing and eventually falling through the ground. And sometimes you can drive through a block - the block moves, but not nearly as fast as it should.

What are you using for your physics engine? Rigid-body type physics - or points-springs type physics?

Id like to see the physics engine come into the game more. Like barriers that you have to knock down to get to the next waypoint. For some reason Id like to see a set of dominos where you could knock the first one down and let the physics engine knock the rest down. In fact I may just edit your plist file to see what thats like!

Speaking of the plist file... how do you define boxes that can be moved vs ones that are stationary. Can you define their mass from the plist? And everything is <string>s except for posx which is an <integer>?

Im not sure I like the camera angle very much. I wish I could change the pitch and the zoom of the camera. Often I feel I cant see enough in front of me.

good luck in the contest!

[willThimbleby]

thanks all

I'm working on all the suggestions. To answer codemattic's questions:

I'm using ODE http://ode.org for the physics. Pros and cons. See here:http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?p=68014&posted=1#post68014
The plist just contains the rigid bodies, atm.

I'm fighting with ODE trying to improve the physics at the moment. And trying to figure if I can possibly make it networkable. As for the camera, I quite liked the micromachines-esqu feel, but I'll probably fix that.

I'll post an update soon. -will

[funkboy]

Outstanding physics, I love it.

Control is really really loose right now, tightening it up some more would be nice. I like the camera, I think it's not bad.

Micromachines is the perfect idea to compare this to, yes. Jumps are ... rad :)

Keep going, you have an excellent game that could most definitely win something!

[drzeip]

Maybe you could have some kind of arrow pointing the right way to go or maybe a map...I find it quite hard to know where to go next... Also it seems as though something is pulling on the ship when I try to steer sometimes. Is it trying to point me towards the next checkpoint? Otherwise I like this a lot - I've never played anything like but I do agree that it should have more walls and slopes to jump around and do tricks off.

Maybe you could have a barrel roll key and you could get points for big jumps and spins etc.

Are you going to have boosters? This could be fun with boosters and tunnels and jumps and rings of fire!!! Sorry getting carried away :wacko:

In the words of Borat the great!! Niice...I Like!!

[willThimbleby]

Just been messing around trying to add AI players in. They don't pose much of a threat but they do kinda work. :) I've also spent a long time fiddling with the physics, hopefully it feels more solid and controllable. Tell me what you think.

Also it now uses arrows and w,a,s,d for controls as-well. X rights the ship and tab changes the camera player.

It's quite fun watching my AI struggle to drive.

http://www.adlam.plus.com/will/BitRace2.zip

enjoy --Will

[Steven]

42:~ steven$ /Users/steven/Desktop/Downloads/BitRace2/JetRace.app/Contents/MacOS/JetRace
dyld: /Users/steven/Desktop/Downloads/BitRace2/JetRace.app/Contents/MacOS/JetRace can't open library: /Users/william/JetRace/build/JetRace.build/JetRace.build/Objects-normal/ppc/libstdc++_ZeroLink.dylib (No such file or directory, errno = 2)
Trace/BPT trap

Turn ZeroLink off? :p

[willThimbleby]

Bother it. I must stop doing that. :P

I've updated it now.

[Steven]

Yikes. It's impossible to drive these things around. What, is the floor grease? I just can't play like that...

[JustinFic]

Second that- it's way too frustrating to control the racer this time. The acceleration/decceleration (sp?) feels like it should be much quicker.

All the other changes rock though. One of the computer AI's was actually doing pretty good. I saw it actually go back and get a little distance before taking the ramp for instance.

[willThimbleby]

Is this better?

I've messed around with the physics hopefully it is better. But I think I have an over saturation of playing.

New features: Better graphics, physics and cones to crash into

http://www.adlam.plus.com/will/bitracer4.png

The HUD still looks very bad and there's no sound yet. :(

Have a go and let me know what you think.

http://www.adlam.plus.com/will/BitRace4.zip

[DaFalcon]

Much improved graphics, very cool.

BTW, playing this demo and a combination of a few other factors moved me to go buy F-Zero GX for Gamecube this past week and it is currently one of my very favorite games. Doesn't hurt that the main character is named Captain Falcon :-) I kept thinking about cool little racers and got to thinking about the old McDonald's givaways: Mini Streex, and how I loved those as a kid. Anyway :-)

I'll d/l this when I get home ... the controls were .. wonky... before, so I hope they're a little easier to control now.

[arekkusu]

Needs to sync to VBL and not eat 100% of the CPU.

If you're heading parallel to a wall right next to it, you can't turn away from it. Similarly if you're headed exactly perpendicular into a wall, you can't turn.

Also, the gouraud shading is nicer, but what happened to the outline on your car? It had a neat cartoon feel before.

[drzeip]

hehehehe i like this. it took me a while to get into it but there is some cool stuff - like the very last corner before the lap end. You can do some really cool barrel roll turn into the lap end if you hit the wall just right...

Any chance of a level editor?? :D

I tried editing 'level.plist' but i couldn't figure out how to stick ramps in...MORE RAMPS!!!!

Controls are a little better too although they take getting used to. Anyway well done.

[willThimbleby]

DaFalcon - glad I could help :P

VBL syncing -done
-- but aren't games supposed to use 100% ?

Turning is a problem - though the computers struggle more. I need to mess with the physics more.

The cartoon feel will make a come back - though possibly as an option, it cuts my fps by about 20 - but then I have a G4 450, but still it might be a problem for someone.

As for a level editor, my current idea is to write a python export script from blender. That is -- if I can't get good physics out of a trimesh. ATM the plist file uses these keys for rotation to define a rotation axis and angle.


<key>rotangle</key>
<string>-20</string>
<key>rotx</key>
<string>15</string>
<key>roty</key>
<string>0</string>
<key>rotz</key>
<string>0</string>

next on my to-do - particles

hmmm.. lots of half sentences and thoughts there

[willThimbleby]

How time flys. :) I really haven't had much time at all to do what I wanted. However, I have now commited to uDG and have registered.

My biggest problem has been ODE, I just can't get it to do anything but cubes reliably. Which means my maps are quite boring. :( If anyone has good ideas about how to make cubes look good let me know.

To keep you posted on progress I've uploaded a few screenshots here http://will.thimbleby.net/bitracer

Hopefully I will be able to make a good 1player racing game, perhaps not on the scale nor as pretty as I first wanted but with decent ai and a few tracks. Unfortunately the whole of the next week is out as I'm at a conference in Finland.

If your interested you can see what I'm up to in Finland here http://will.thimbleby.net/downloads/RealCalculator2.mov It is really quite neat, but unfortunately unrelated to uDG. :(

-Will

[ThemsAllTook]

If your interested you can see what I'm up to in Finland here http://will.thimbleby.net/downloads/RealCalculator2.mov It is really quite neat, but unfortunately unrelated to uDG. :(

Is this an actual application, or a mocked-up movie? If this application actually runs, that's amazing! Super cool stuff!

Alex Diener

[arekkusu]

Very cool calculator pad. Is that Ink-based recognition or custom?

Back on topic, BitRacer would really benefit from anisotropic filtering on the floor grid texture.

[willThimbleby]

quick reply from Finland:

Yep, all my own work, the recognition is very simple and you have to get used to it to use it as well as I do. But it does really work like that.

Ansiotropic filtering is close to the top of my list. --cheers

[arekkusu]

UDG download link is broken, capitalization doesn't match. But the download at http://www.adlam.plus.com/will/downloads/BitRacer.zip has problems:

* When starting a race, everything goes in super slow motion. Unplayable. Speed is fine right up to the point the race starts.
* Resolution options don't actually change resolution, they just use a smaller 4:3 aspect portion of the display, leaving big black areas around it. No support for non 4:3 aspect displays.
* Enabling FSAA via ATI Monitor overrides makes the game fail to launch. It bounces for a while and then just sits in the dock. It's slow to launch anyway... but it does launch eventually if FSAA isn't forced.
* Can Alt-Tab to other apps during fullscreen...

BTW how did you do the desktop->game fade? I can't get that effect with fullscreen contexts. Can you do fullscreen->desktop too?

[willThimbleby]

Thanks, fixed.

I've updated it today, make sure the version you have says 1.0.3 in the bottom right of the main screen. Also, what sort of specs are you running, I've had immense problems with non-duals as my multi threading didn't work well on them, but I now detect them and use a single threaded method.

Couldn't get full-screen contexts to work properly so non-res switching solution is temporary solution. And I'll have to find someone with FSAA to test it on their comp. Any hints are welcome.

I don't mind about alt-tabing, it's useful.

The gamma fade is easy, I use a blanking window and then slowly increase it's alpha from 0 to 1 -- no opengl only OS X. Works any which way you want. Most of my UI is a cross between openGL and IB views, which is handily easy on OS X.

[arekkusu]

I was already testing 1.03. I redownloaded, nothing has changed.

This is on a 1.25 GHz 15" AlBook, Radeon 9600, 1 gig RAM, 10.3.6.

For testing single-proc machines, you know that CHUD's Hardware control panel will let you disable one of your CPUs, right?

All GPUs newer than Rage128 support some level of FSAA, all you have to do is add the pixel format flags. Adding the UI toggle will take longer...

re: Alt-tab, let me clarify-- holding down Alt-Tab changes the cursor to the finger pointer, and it swaps out the current app, but your game stays on top. The other application doesn't become visible, so this is broken behavior. You should look into SetSystemUIMode, and/or applicationDidResignActive.

Hm, so your context isn't really fullscreen. The crossfade doesn't work with fullscreen contexts...

[willThimbleby]

Very odd, I've tested on a 1GHz iBook and eMac, and they both run fine. It also runs (but slow) on one of my 450MHz G4s.

I've fixed a couple more bugs, but I've no idea why it runs slow. Can you tell me how many processors it thinks there are in the console output.

Cheers

[arekkusu]

Here's what it dumps to Console between launch and start of (super slow) race:

2004-11-08 03:07:51.128 JetRace[4069] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x50ce80 of class NSCFString autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
2004-11-08 03:07:55.214 JetRace[4069] /Users/arekkusu/Applications/Games/UDG 2004 finals/BitRacer/Tracks.brtracks/Contents/tracks.yaml
2004-11-08 03:07:56.316 JetRace[4069] /Users/arekkusu/Applications/Games/UDG 2004 finals/BitRacer/BitRacer.app/Contents/Resources/engine.wav
2004-11-08 03:08:00.842 JetRace[4069] "Race"
2004-11-08 03:08:02.089 JetRace[4069] "Start"
2004-11-08 03:08:02.089 JetRace[4069] processors 1
2004-11-08 03:08:02.161 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.165 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.170 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.174 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.178 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.182 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.186 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.190 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.194 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.198 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.202 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.206 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.211 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.215 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.220 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.224 JetRace[4069] 28,28,52
2004-11-08 03:08:02.237 JetRace[4069] 82,174,156
2004-11-08 03:08:02.262 JetRace[4069] Racer:100 -- 100, 100
2004-11-08 03:08:02.275 JetRace[4069] 82,174,156
2004-11-08 03:08:02.275 JetRace[4069] Racer:101 -- 101, 101
2004-11-08 03:08:02.288 JetRace[4069] 82,174,156
2004-11-08 03:08:02.288 JetRace[4069] Racer:102 -- 102, 102
2004-11-08 03:08:02.301 JetRace[4069] 82,174,156
2004-11-08 03:08:02.301 JetRace[4069] Racer:103 -- 103, 103
2004-11-08 03:08:02.612 JetRace[4069] 4, 32, 1, 64, 64
2004-11-08 03:08:02.624 JetRace[4069] 4, 32, 1, 256, 256
2004-11-08 03:08:02.636 JetRace[4069] 4, 32, 1, 256, 256
2004-11-08 03:08:02.666 JetRace[4069] 4, 32, 1, 1024, 256

[diordna]

There are waaaaay too many laps. I get bored really fast since the AI can't beat me. I mean...8 laps for one track? wtf?